‘Canaries in the coalmine’: the extinction of birds implies a shift in the planet’s climate.
A global investigation has discovered that the world’s birds, dubbed the “canaries in the coalmine,” are dying in significant numbers as humanity’s massive impact on the earth grows.
There are over 11,000 bird species in the world, yet half of them are declining in population, while just 6% are increasing. They are the most researched large group because of their flying and singing, which makes them easier to examine than many other creatures.
All human-caused damage, including habitat destruction, climate change, pesticides and other pollution, over-hunting, and the effects of alien species and illness, has an impact on bird populations. According to the scientists, this makes them the finest living indicators of world change.
Hundreds of millions of birds have been lost in North America and Europe alone in recent decades, and while the tropics have more species, temperate and mostly richer countries have a higher proportion of species at risk of extinction, according to the study.
Individual species have been saved from extinction in specific regions thanks to conservation efforts, but the researchers say that political will and funds are needed to reverse the worldwide loss.
“Birds are a far more potent taxon [than others] in terms of telling us a story about the health of the world,” said Alexander Lees, who headed the review at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom. “We know so much about them — we don’t know anything about them.”
“Right now, we’re triaging the threatened species,” he said, “but we’re not stemming the flow of species toward extinction.” “With site-based conservation, there’s only so much we can do.” Since 1988, conservation efforts have improved the populations of 70 species, lowering their risk of extinction, while 391 species have deteriorated, according to the assessment.
The analysis was based on data compiled by Birdlife International, whose CEO, Patricia Zurita, said: “Birds truly are the canary in the coal mine as indicators for the health of our planet, given their sensitivity to ecological changes, their ubiquity around the globe, and how thoroughly they are researched.” [We] must pay attention to and act on what birds are telling us, since they are vanishing at an alarming rate.”
The study, which was published in the journal Annual Review of Environment and Resources, discovered that 48 percent of bird species are known or thought to be in decline, compared to 39 percent with flat trends, 6% with rises, and 7% with unknown trends.
The majority of long-term data comes from Europe, North America, India, and a few African sites, although recent monitoring in Latin America and Asia has yielded comparable results. Since 1970, the number of birds in the United States and Canada has decreased by 3 billion, while 600 million have vanished from Europe since 1980.
The analysis highlights a diverse range of species, including Antarctic petrels that nest 200 kilometers inland in Antarctica and Hornby’s storm-petrels that nest in the Atacama Desert.
A Rüppell’s vulture has been seen flying at a height of 11,300 meters, whereas emperor penguins may dive to depths of over 500 meters. Birds are important culturally, but they are also important to ecosystems because they disperse seeds and eat pests.
All of the effects of human activities have an impact on birds. In Canada alone, 2.7 million people are expected to die each year from pesticide poisoning, while domestic cats are thought to kill 2.4 billion people each year in the United States. Larger and slower-reproducing bird families, such as parrots, albatrosses, cranes, and stocky birds like the Australian brush turkey, are the most endangered. According to the analysis, every country has at least one globally vulnerable bird species, with eleven countries having more than 75.
